Amherst Center for Russian Culture Symposium "Tales and Visions of Elena Guro: a Woman in the Russian Avant-Garde"

The Amherst Center for Russian Culture will host an international symposium on the work of avant-garde writer and artist Elena Guro (1877-1913), the first of its kind in the U.S. The symposium will take place on April 21-22, and include events at the Mead Art Museum and at the Center for Russian Culture (Webster Hall, second floor).

Elena Guro was the earliest of the “Russian Amazons,” the women who emerged as leading artists of the avant-garde in the pre-revolutionary period. Guro also wrote experimental stories, poems and plays, making her a rare woman contributor to the European avant-garde of the time.

The symposium is sponsored by the Lawrence '62 and Suzanne Weiss Fund of the Amherst Center for Russian Culture and Mead Art Museum.

THE PROGRAM:

Saturday, April 22

9:45 a.m. Welcome – Stanley Rabinowitz, Director of the Amherst Center for Russian Culture
10 a.m.-Noon
I. Poetics of Elena Guro
- Nina Gourianova, Northwestern University: “Elena Guro’s Alchemy of Writing”
- Catherine Ciepiela, Amherst College: “Guro’s Harlequinade”
- Kevin O’Brien, Chapman University: “Guro’s ‘Korova’”
Discussant: Michael Kunichika, Amherst College

Lunch break: Noon-1 p.m.

1:30-3 p.m.
II. Guro and Avant-Garde Art
- Andrei Sarabianov, Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center (Moscow): “Elena Guro as Avant-garde Artist”
- Isabel Wünsche, Jacobs University Bremen: “Elena Guro, Mikhail Matiushin, and the Organic School of the Russian Avant-Garde”
Discussant: Alla Rosenfeld, Amherst College

3:15-5 p.m.
III. Guro: Projections
- Ilya Kukuj, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München: “Elena Guro’s The Poor Knight (1910-13) and Ry Nikonova’s Jesus the Student (1969)”
- Ainsley Morse, Harvard University: “The ‘Guro Strain’ in Contemporary Poetry”
- Matvei Yankelevich, Ugly Duckling Presse: “Translating the Slippery Transcendentalism of Elena Guro”
Discussant: Stephanie Sandler, Harvard University

5-6:30 p.m.
Poetry Reading
Introduced by Polina Barskova, Hampshire College
Kevin O’Brien, Chapman University
Matvei Yankelevich, Ugly Duckling Presse